A few days ago I decided to take on one of my big to-do-tasks. It was time to sort photographs and other odds-and-ends of personal history, discard things I didn’t want, and organize the remainders so that I knew what I had. I wanted to be able to put my...

Once a week I receive an e-mail from Linkedin telling me the number of times my name came up in a search. Most of the time I erase the message, but today I looked. Some small cadre of people searched for “Philosophy” and “Aging” and my name had popped up....

Have you ever been in a situation where someone says something to you that is unsettling, but you’re not sure why you feel that way? It is only after such an incident that you identify the source of the discomfort and only then begin to figure out what could have...

For the past eight years I have been writing about the issues that all of us older people face as we move through the aging process. On April 6, 2010, I published my first article in the Newton TAB which serves our city of close to 90,000. Over the years,...

I am coming up on a pretty big birthday this summer. Certainly, there are many people who are older than I am, but there are a lot more who are younger. When I was 64 years old and with a family history of longevity, I realized that I could have...

From time to time I write about being on the beach. Mostly I find myself on Wellfleet Town or National Seashore beaches. My experiences there include visits to protected bay beaches with their calm waters and carpets of shells, crab remains, and rounded stones. But I also walk along the...

I love to walk around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. I take this walk during the day. I don’t go when it is dark, mainly because I worry about not seeing and then stumbling on a wayward rock. I don’t know if people are there at night or in the early...

Last spring I began to sense that I needed a break. I was feeling anxious and at odds with myself, and couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was the seeming confusion and uncertainty of the local and national political scenes. Maybe I hadn’t accomplished all that I had hoped in...

At High Holiday services just a few days ago, Rabbi Joel Sisenwine told a story that, at first, seemed off-base in the middle of the seriousness of the day. He began to talk about a 2014 Garth Brooks concert in Minneapolis. I wondered what the point was until the Rabbi...

The ideas for many of my age-friendly articles come from the perspective of others. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that “age-friendly service providers, public officials, community leaders, faith leaders and business people: recognize the great diversity among older persons, promote their inclusion and contribution in all areas of community...

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About Marian

Marian Leah Knapp, Ph.D., wants to start a new conversation about “aging with intent.” Much of what is written about elders is from the point of view of physicians, psychiatrists, gerontologists, and adult children. In her roles as author, columnist, speaker and elder activist, Marian is reporting from the front lines.Full biography